Blurb Book Review: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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The narrator was put in a cage along with 39 women. Being a child herself, she shouldn’t have been there but nonetheless was still caged with them. Just as she reaches puberty, a siren goes off and the guards leave abruptly, leaving the keys dangling in the lock. Now freed, the forty women trek outside for the first time in over a decade.

This novel is compelling, written from the point of view of the young girl over the course of her lifetime. She has no memory of life before the cage so she has nothing to compare the world to, but finds some delight in listening to the stories of the women as they walk across the landscape in hopes of finding others like them.

In their travels they find other underground cages filled with 40 people each, always only men or only women. These 40 women eventually settle into a kind of village where they live out their lives, never encountering another living soul. Once the last of them has died, the narrator continues on her own.

I was frustrated with the novel in that while these women find other cages and food stores for those cages, there’s no way the food would be viable after a decade. Sure, the cans would be good, but frozen food does go bad and the mere idea of fresh food after two or three years is just too far-fetched. Also, the reason they were put in cages is never explained, the siren isn’t explained, and while the landscape seems bleak, there are enough trees for wood so it can’t be that bleak.

In addition, when the women exit their prison and go outside, there’s no trace of the guards. No tire tracks, nothing. There’s also no power plant or water plant, even though power is running to every prison and each one also has running water. This was a lot to handwave away for me.

Still, the narrator’s journey is interesting.

Blurb Book Review: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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When I heard that the author wasn’t allowed to promote this novel, I immediately put it on hold at the library.

It’s a tell-all novel about the global rise of Facebook/Meta during the author’s employment there from roughly 2010 to 2017. If the information in the novel is true – and I’m in no position to be able to actually fact-check any of it – then it highlights the despicable nature of Mark Zuckerberg and the repugnance of how Facebook/Meta has used the data available to them.

The author sees how Facebook helped people in Christchurch after a natural disaster,. It connected them and helped families stay in touch and the author sees the potential this platform could have on a global scale. Getting governments on board and Facebook into their countries turns out to be a bit more difficult than she anticipates, and she seriously misjudges Zuckerberg’s intentions.

This novel lays everything bare, but what was particularly disturbing for me was how Facebook was involved in getting Trump elected in 2016. I knew about the misinformation, that became common knowledge, but I didn’t know about the targeted posts to certain Democrats; young women, white liberals who might like Bernie Sanders, and Black voters. These voters got ‘dark posts’: non-public posts only they could see. These posts were invisible to researchers or anyone looking at their feed. The idea, apparently, was to feed these people information that would discourage them from voting for Clinton. And it worked.

In addition, Facebook let China have access to data from America in exchange for having the platform available to China. Facebook also allowed China to spy on their citizens through the app.

What absolutely galls me is how much illegal activity is mentioned in the novel. The author must have kept intricate and copious notes to be able to recall all these details. But will Facebook have any blowback? Will they be held accountable? Probably not. The uber-wealthy operate on a different plane of existence compared to everyone else. Besides, it’s becoming common knowledge that the top billionaires of the world have dismantled the regulatory system so they can operate however they please.

Anyway, the novel is well-written with clear facts and an engaging narrative.

Tiny Blurb Book Review: Bad Dreams in the Night by Adam Ellis (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Eleven horror stories exploring the supernatural lurking in everyday life.

I love the author’s art style and have been following them for a few years. I’d read some of these comics online, but only one to completion. The author is careful not to spoil all the endings.

Each story is creepy in the best possible way. I love a good horror and these are delightfully disturbing and twisted.

Blurb Book Review: Rose/House by Arkady Martine (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Detective Maritza Smith gets a call from Rose House – an AI-infused house – informing her of a body inside, dutifully fulfilling the duty-of-care directive of notifying the authorities of a deceased person within the house.

Except the house’s creator has already passed and is currently a diamond sitting on a plinth inside the house, and the only person who the AI will allow inside is in Turkey, nowhere near the Mojave Desert.

Detective Smith needs to figure out how the deceased got inside while also trying to get inside herself.

The novella didn’t quite tie up the loose ends in a way I’d prefer. The plot is complete; of how Smith gains entry, what she sees, and how the person died in there, but the story is left open-ended. Smith ends up leaving with some valuable tech, but does she use it or not?

AI houses are common in this universe. Or at least, houses with embedded AI. But Rose House is different, it’s more sophisticated. The deceased wanted to take the code and use it to create a city, buy why? Why would humans want to have buildings operated or infused with AI?

Anyway, the novella is well written and engaging, it’s also a peek into a near-future dystopia that I’m not sure I’d like to live in.

Blurb Book Review: Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Dorothy Gentleman is on a generational ship, 300 years into a 1,000 year journey, and has placed herself in her memory book where she can rest in the library for a while. She awakens in someone else’s body instead of in a blank, which tips her off that there might be a problem.

As she acclimatizes to the body, she sets out to solve a murder. Murders happen on the ship, although not too often since the person can just be put right back into a blank body, and as the ship’s detective it’s up to Dorothy to solve them.

It might help if the ship wasn’t drunk from the magnetic storm, though.

This is a novella, only 100 small pages, barely enough time to really get to know the characters or setting. As I read and found out the motive for murder, I found my head spinning as I couldn’t quite track the information. There were too many characters mentioned and not enough development of them to have them fully root in my mind. I feel like this book could use a little more padding, a few more hints about the financial aspects of the ship, for the payoff of the motive to be satisfying.

Otherwise, this was a delightful read, one that I did in one evening, and I’d read more by this author. This is the first in the Dorothy Gentleman series, so I have some more novellas to look forward to.

Blurb Book Review: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Sara is on her way back from a work trip when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pulls her aside for further review. Using data gleaned from 200 data points, the RAA determines she’s too high of a risk and may commit a crime against her husband, so she’s sent to a facility for observation for 21 days, until her risk score goes down.

There, she learns that the rules shift without notice and any violations add time to her observation.

In addition, her Dreamsaver, a neuro unit that helps her feel fully rested after only a few hours of sleep, records her dreams for the RAA to use against her.

One day, a newbie arrives in the middle of the night and leaves after exactly three weeks, something that’s almost unheard of. This new person sets Sara on a course to rebellion.

This novel is horrifyingly possible. Not the dream part, technology isn’t there yet, but definitely the risk assessment part. Imagine having a distant cousin’s political views affect your score, or that one time you lost your temper at work would cause your score to increase. With an administration sorting through the data, they can find anything if they look hard enough.

I was glued to the pages throughout. The author does a fantastic job of showing the sliding rules, the privileges dressed up as rights, and how difficult it can be to conform to what the person in authority believes you should be.

I enjoyed this novel immensely.

Blurb Book Review: The In-Between Bookstore by Edward Underhill (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Darby is annoyed with New York and suddenly unemployed. On the cusp of his thirtieth birthday and unsure of what to do with his life, he decides to move back to his hometown of Oak Falls, Illinois to help his mom move out of his childhood home and into a new condo. Once at Oak Falls, he visits the beloved bookstore he worked at as a teen. He steps inside to see everything is exactly the same, from the hand-lettered signs to the musty smell of books. Most shocking is the teen behind the counter, who looks exactly like he did back in 2009, some sixteen years ago.

Faced with the opportunity to change his present by talking to his past self, he’s got to figure out how to talk to his younger self before this connection vanishes forever.

The novel had me at time travel. I love the idea of being able to visit my younger self and maybe even help my past self realize some things that would definitely help my present self, just like Darby. I liked the transitions from past to present and how Darby’s entire focus was on trying to connect with his past self without seeming creepy or weird.

The theme was connection, broken or strong, between people. Darby has the chance to repair the relationship between him and his best friend from high school, a breakup that mystified Darby until nearly the end of the novel.

Another theme is acceptance. Darby is trans and having the opportunity to see how his hometown accepts him for who he is right now was well done. While New York might have a stronger LGBTQ+ community, there was one in Oak Falls as well. Eventually, Darby needs to make a choice: stay in Oak Falls or move back to New York where he’s carved out a life.

Overall, this novel was sweet and endearing. Darby is believable and so is time travelling by stepping through the door of a bookstore.

Blurb Book Review: The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Dalton Greaves is a human representative of Unity, a panspecies federation determined to bring every sentient species into its fold. He’s joined by Neera (also human) on a diplomatic mission to curry favour with a new species, minarchs, before yet a third species (stickmen of the Assembly) can do so. While on the planet with a representative of the Assembly, both the stickman’s ship and Dalton’s ship explode in a conflict.

Left to carry out the mission while waiting for help to arrive, Dalton inadvertently becomes the Fourth Consort to a powerful minarch: First-Among-Equals. While this position should give Dalton plenty of time to bring the minarchs around to accepting Unity, instead, Dalton befriends the stickman and learns that Unity is more about plundering than acceptance.

I liked the concept of this novel; the idea that there are many sentient species out there and there’s federations like Unity and Assembly, but ultimately the book left me frustrated.

Dalton is a passive character. Everything happens to him, including infodumps about the different species, rather than him making choices that land him in situations. By the midpoint I was having difficulty believing Dalton was a diplomat. He’s woefully unprepared for the role and seems to be blundering his way along. Every time he meets with First-Among-Equals, he does nothing to further the cause he’s been given. Instead, he essentially defends himself against what First-Among-Equals says about humans and hides in his quarters.

Along the same lines, so much time in the novel seems to be spent asking why his translator couldn’t pick up a phrase or word. This could be solved by Dalton simply asking for clarification. Why not? Why doesn’t he just ask for a definition of a word or phrase? These questions plagued me as I read on.

I finished the novel because I did want to see how it would end, whether Dalton would get the minarchs on his side or not, but it was a bit of a slog.

Blurb Book Review: Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Jane and Dan go out to a ridiculously expensive restaurant to celebrate their nineteenth wedding anniversary, one Jane feels is their last. Neither expected to be smack dab in the middle of a crime – or to be taken as hostages – for the evening. As events unfold, Jane notices the crime plays out eerily similar to the novel she published six years prior. At the same time, Dan realizes one of the hostage takers is their daughter.

The novel highlights the stagnant feeling that can happen in long term relationships, especially with children on the cusp of leaving home. Jane feels underappreciated and anchorless, unsure of what she wants in life after having devoted two decades to parenting and being someone’s wife. Dan, also needing an outlet of his own, takes on a new hobby, one which Jane assumes is an affair.

I enjoyed the narrative voice. Mostly told through Jane’s pov, the voice is humorous with a dash of frustration. Jane wants change in her life but doesn’t know what that change is, exactly. She takes the apparent affair as a launching pad for divorce, thinking that by separating from Dan she’ll be able to find herself again.

Overall, this is a light read, the author ties up all the loose ends, and Dan’s new hobby even helps save the day.

Blurb Book Review: The Only One Left by Riley Sager (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

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Kit is a caregiver on suspension because her last client died due to her apparent carelessness. Desperate for a job, Kit accepts a position at Hope’s End, caring for a woman who’s rumoured to have murdered her whole family just over 50 years prior.

When Kit arrives, she sees the house is crumbling along with the cliff face. While navigating the tilted house, she hesitantly takes up her duties caring for Lenora Hope, a victim of several strokes and unable to move anything except her left hand.

Lenora teases Kit with details of the murders by typing out pages on an old typewriter. As the history of the murders is revealed, so are secrets about the family that have been kept for five decades.

This novel has several reveals by the end, all of them hinted at throughout the work. Just as I absorbed reading about how the murders were committed, I was hit with what really happened to both sisters, Virginia and Lenora, as well as how Kit’s family was involved. By the end, every thread is tied up neatly and masterfully.

My only nitpick was that the author repeated information quite often, making parts feel repetitive and drawn out. The reveals at the end make up for this, though.